For someone akin to winning, Tony Kanaan's post-race demeanour at Richmond International Raceway on Saturday night showed the relief of having overcome a frustrating first half of the
IndyCar Series season.
The Brazilian avoided the single- and multi-car mishaps that led to nine caution periods on the 0.75-mile D-shaped oval - the shortest on the schedule but populated by a race-record 26 entries - to win the SunTrust Indy Challenge for the first time. It was his first win in 2008, indeed his first since Detroit 2007, and allowed the Andretti Green driver to make up some ground on series leader Scott Dixon, who finished third.
Of course, allotted some better luck on three other ovals and the tables might have been turned, with Dixon lucking in to victory at Homestead where Kanaan was leading late in the season opener until the spinning car of rookie Ernesto Viso clipped the #11 7-Eleven car and dropped it to eighth. Kanaan was also leading on lap 105 at
Indianapolis when the car white-walled turn three, spun and was broadsided by an approaching car. Then, just a week ago, he was running third on at Iowa Speedway when the car spun at the exit of turn one and ended its race in the SAFER Barrier.
That's a considerable sum to throw away, especially when the three drivers in front of him - Dixon, Helio Castroneves and Dan Wheldon - have consistently been in the top five.
"I'm going to enjoy my win, for sure," Kanaan said of his 13th victory in the
IndyCar Series, including five from 2007 alone, "I knew that I had to keep fighting. There's nothing else I can do. If you're going to have the season you expect every year, then it's going to be pretty boring.
"I knew it was going to turn around, [but] I didn't know when. I thought it was last weekend and I made a mistake. When those kind of things happen, I have a tendency to actually have more strength to turn the situation around. I think I work better when I put a lot of pressure on myself and, you know, I came in determined to win this race, and it worked out."
Kanaan led a field-high 166 laps - more than his total in the previous eight races - and inherited the point when team-mate Marco Andretti had to make a green flag pit-stop after completing 135 laps on a 22-gallon load of ethanol. Once back in front, Kanaan ran away from Castroneves down the caution-free final stretch.
"I was just sweating with ten laps to go, thinking 'what's going to happen now'?" Kanaan admitted, "It was like 'okay, something is going to blow up; it's going to rain'. Actually, if it rains, I was going to win, but maybe I was going to spin in the rain. I knew that we had a good car, but that's how funny racing is. Sometimes it comes when you least expect it."
Kanaan's luck also held with the timing of the various yellows, as he admitted that the race could have gone either his way or Andretti's.
